The known toasters comprise a housing for receiving the pieces of bread to be toasted or reheated and on both sides of this housing a heating element consisting of a bar or tube made of thermally insulating material such as steatite, around which an electric resistor is helically wound.
These heating elements emit, toward the pieces of bread accommodated in the appliance, infrared radiation which is intended to color or toast their surface.
The result obtained on the pieces of bread is dependent, in the case of a given surface, source of infrared radiation and type of bread, upon the power of the source and the time of exposure.
For this reason, a powerful source will color the surface of the bread in very short periods of time with little evaporation of water (soft toast). In contrast, a weak power source will color the surface of the bread in long periods of time with much evaporation of water (dry or crispy toast).
Since the appliance has a defined time scale, which has to be the same whatever the mode of operation, the invention proposes to adapt the power of emission of the heat radiation in accordance with the user's needs by commutation of additional resistive heating elements.
The pieces of bread take the form of slices of bread, pieces of baguettes, loaves cut lengthwise or pre-sliced pieces of bread of various shapes.
The known toasters are designed essentially to toast slices of bread or pieces of baguette.
This toasting results in a brown coloration of the sides of the slices or pieces of bread facing the radiation emitted by the two heating elements.
The users are often required to defrost or reheat pieces of bread without this resulting in a superficial coloration of these pieces.
It is not possible to obtain this result with the known toasters. In fact, in the case of defrosting pieces of bread, a pronounced browning of their surface appears before their core is defrosted.
Moreover, in the case of pieces of baguettes, one of the sides thereof already has a toasted crust and it is consequently desirable to toast only the other side devoid of crust without browning the latter too much.